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Transcript:
Sarah Williams: Welcome to Write with Love. I’m your host, Sarah Williams, bestselling author, speaker, and creative entrepreneur. Each week I chat to passionate, and inspiring authors about their journey in creative writing. Some are traditionally published, some do it themselves. Everyone’s journey is different, and everyone has something interesting to say. We all love love, and love what we do. Today’s show is brought to you by our amazing fans and supporters on Patreon. If you’d like to help support the show and get some awesome bonus episodes, go to patreon.com/SarahWilliamsAuthor to learn more. Now here’s today’s show.
Sarah Williams: G’day, g’day. Sarah Williams here, just sprooking out my format of the podcast, because it’s my show, and I can do what I want. So, just a little personal update on Wednesday, July 4th, 2018, my latest book, The Sky over Brigadier Station is being released. So I’m totally excited about this. It’s number two in my Brigadier Station series, set in Julia Creek in the Queensland outback of Australia. So that is coming out, and it’ll be on all your digital platforms: Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play, et cetera, and it’ll also be available in print. If you do want to get a copy of that it’ll be available through Book Depository, Booktopia, and all those usual spots. So it’s very exciting and as part of my promotion, my launch will be on Facebook Live. That will be on Wednesday, 4th of July at 7:30 PM, Brisbane Queensland time, it’s +10 if you’re trying to figure that out on the time zones.
Sarah Williams: Join us, it will only go for about half an hour, it’ll be Q&A so you can ask me anything you want. What I do to promote or how I found inspiration, or my research, or whatever you want to ask. If you want to ask about the podcast you can do that as well. And I will be giving away some copies of my latest book, so that will be fantastic and I hope you can join me there. I’ve not done a Facebook Live before, so I’m a bit excited, but also very nervous about it. In the week of my launch, I’m also discounting the first in the series, so The Brothers of Brigadier Station will be going free for a week. Jump online and it’ll just be free digitally. So, Amazon, Kobo, et cetera. You can definitely do that, and I think you’ll get all ready for the second book.
Sarah Williams: And talking about The Brothers of Brigadier Station, I had a great week this past week and it actually made number three on the paid, bestseller list for amazon.com.au. It was number three. One, two, three. That was it. Very exciting. It also topped number one in the contemporary romance, which knocked Nora Roberts off first place. Yay. My book sold more than Nora Roberts that day. Whoo. Yup, it’s up there and it’ll be free next week, so if you haven’t already, you should definitely grab a copy.
Sarah Williams: All right, so what else am I up to? I have, now that I’ve got the Brothers, number one and number two out in the world, I am on to another book. So starting again and I am in the early stages, so I’m just doing my research. I’m basing my next one on a dairy farm in Maleny on the Sunshine Coast, which of course is where we moved at the end of last year. I’m excited to learn about dairy cattle as opposed to beef cattle that I’ve been writing about for the last three years. That’s exciting, and I’m also planning the third Brigadier Station series if you can believe it. That’s going to be Legacies of Brigadier Station, and it will be out next year. Early next year.
Sarah Williams: If you haven’t already booked your tickets to Romance Writers of New Zealand Conference in Auckland, of course I’ll be there, and that is open so you can definitely still book. So go and do that. If you’d rather go to the Australian one or you’re doing both, the Romance Writers of Australia Conference, it will be in Sydney in August as well, and you can definitely still register and attend to that, so both should be absolutely fantastic events.
Sarah Williams: All right, so today’s interview is coming up next and I hope you enjoy it. And next week, I am actually going to be interviewing myself. That should be interesting. I’ll probably bare a little bit more than I have before, so I hope you’ll stick around and learn a little bit about me and why I do this podcast and why I’m a writer and try and find time with all my four kids, which will also be on school holiday, so it might be a little bit noisy. Hopefully not too bad. So, thanks for joining me, and I hope you enjoy the interview which is coming up now.
Sarah Williams: Today I’m chatting to Maggie Wells. Thanks for joining me, Maggie.
Maggie Wells: Thanks for having me, it’s great to be here.
Sarah Williams: Excellent. Can you tell us about yourself and your journey to publication?
Maggie Wells: Sure. Well first I’ll explain my kind of crazy accent. I am from the Midwestern United States, I grew up in Illinois, but I married a man from Arkansas. So I live in the South now and they tell me down here that I talk funny. And when I go home, they tell me I have a drawl. So even more confusing, too, your Aussie was there as [inaudible 00:05:56] viewers. I have a crazy confused accent even for here in the States, so I’m going to apologize for that right away.
Maggie Wells: I published my first book in 2011. I started out small press published with a company called Turquoise Morning Press, had a fantastic experience with them, did a number of books with them all the way through when they closed in 2014 I believe it was, and talk about we’ve had our ups and downs in publishing with publishing houses closing and that was a fantastic experience. She was wonderfully generous and helpful with all this, all rights reverted without drama. It was wonderful.
Maggie Wells: But I have subsequently published with Carina Press, Harlequin E, when they had the E imprint, Kensington’s Lyrical Press Languages, their contemporary romance, Digital First, and just this year I had my first mass market paperback releases with Sourcebooks Casablanca and my Lumpkin series.
Maggie Wells: So it’s been a long journey, lots of ups and downs along the way, but right now everything’s on the up, and I’m very excited to be here.
Sarah Williams: And you’re up to 38 books published. That’s pretty amazing for, what was it, seven years?
Maggie Wells: Yeah, and you have to remember we had that little spurt in 2012 and ’13 when everyone was writing shorter and faster. So about 20 of those titles would be novella length, somewhere in the 25,000 to 35,000-word range. I hate to discount ’em, because I still do the work on ’em, but they’re not full-length novels. Everyone’s like, “Oh, my God, 40 books.” I’m like, “Well, yeah …” We’ll call it 20.
Sarah Williams: But I think novellas are really making a comeback. We have so many distractions between Netflix and everything else and so many books to read. I love novellas.
Maggie Wells: I do, too. I love a short read. I like it when it’s fast paced and can move right along, and like you said we have so many things and in between projects I sometimes want to read a book that’s not going to take me a week to get through. I want to sit down and read it in a couple hours, so I really enjoy short work.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Williams: So Lyrical Press, who you’ve got a lot published with at the moment, so that’s Kensington, so that’s a line of Kensington. I hadn’t even heard of that one before, so tell us about that and how you got in with them.
Maggie Wells: They started, I think it was back in about 2013 or 14, they had Kensington E was their electronic book line, and they decided split off into some different sub-genres, and so they came up with Lyrical Press and Lyrical Shine, which is what their contemporary romance was then. There were are a couple of other imprints from mystery, one that’s a little darker, and so it’s been a fun experience with them because I think by going with the Lyrical imprint has given them a lot of freedom to publish some things that you may not find in other mainstream bookshops.
Maggie Wells: I have a few series with them, one of them is the Coastal Heat series, which is your 30-something contemporary romance based around the beach and not so going deep and one of my favorite ones is called Flip This Love because they just had this horrible chemistry. I had some fun during. They had this bantering thing that just kills me. And then Love & Rockets where the guy actually is a rocket scientist, which I’d like that. So all the male characters in my head was kind of geeky scientist edge, so I had to like that. I like the smart boys.
Sarah Williams: I think that’s great. The Big Bang Theory is huge over here. It’s making a comeback with all these Marvel movies and stuff.
Maggie Wells: Yeah. And I love superhero stuff so there’s a lot of superhero jokes all through that series. So, I was raised by comic book brothers who actually had comic book collections [inaudible 00:10:15] and had the whole marvel vs DC debates [inaudible 00:10:20]. And I think, too, it was correcting someone [inaudible 00:10:25] one woman is not Marvel. I love her. She’s DC.
Maggie Wells: So anyway, but they gave me some freedom there with that, and then we also had a lot of creative freedom with a line called Worth the Wait romances, which are hot contemporary erotic romances for main character is 50 and over, proving we’re not really dead yet. And that’s something that we found is a little bit of a hard sell in most mainstream publishing, is to get anybody over, really, 35. We’ve actually started a Facebook group called Seasoned Romance, we just coined a term that we thought didn’t sound horrible, for people who have a little bit of life experience under their belt, and we’ve actually just clicked over 1200 members in that group, because there are a lot of people like me who are in their 40s that have kids in their 20s, and it’s a little odd to be reading about people who your children’s age. We want to read romances that do have some characters that look like us and may feel like us and have some of the “I’m not 24 year old” flush. So that’s been a lot of fun.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, that’s great. I’ve been reading, actually, a few books like that at the moment, and, yeah, I’m really enjoying and I’m in my mid-30s and I still have young kids, so I can just imagine what it’s going to be like reading about people in their 20s.
Maggie Wells: It makes looking for cover art really interesting, ’cause when you start looking at these young models, you think, ‘Oh, he’s cute.’ And then think, ‘Oh, he’s my son’s age.’ [inaudible 00:12:08].
Sarah Williams: Something [inaudible 00:12:11].
Maggie Wells: Yeah. There’s a reality check for you.
Maggie Wells: And then the third series I have going with Lyrical has been a lot of fun for me personally, because it’s about single dads and it follows these three single dads who’ve banded together as friends and support group for each other, because they are full time dads on the job. And I married a full time dad and became an instant mommy of the minute I said, “I do.” And so it was a project near and dear to my heard because it’s the life I’d lived, and it comes at you a little bit differently when you’re not there from the get go.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. Absolutely. Oh, that’s brilliant. And your tag line is “Author of feminist, sex-positive romance.” How did that all come along? I love it. It’s awesome.
Maggie Wells: It came, actually, out of my agent’s mouth, when I first admitted Love Game was the book that sent to Sara [Megabault 00:13:10] whose my agent. And when she offered for it, one of the things that came out of her mouth was, “I love this book. It’s very feminist, very sex-positive,” and the minute she said it, I thought, ‘Yes, yes, that’s what I want. That’s what I want to write.’ I want to write things where women don’t feel bad about their sexuality or aren’t meant to be 48-year-old virgins, and where they can be equal to their partner and confident in their accomplishments, and I think that’s one thing that we’re always working on as women, is owning our expertise and owning our accomplishments, and so when that came out of her mouth, she’s like, “This is who you are. This is what you write. This is what come through [inaudible 00:13:59].” It was the best thing I’d ever heard.
Sarah Williams: It is. I love it. It’s very modern, very positive. I love that. It’s awesome.
Sarah Williams: And so the series you’re writing at the moment, or have in there, it’s Love Games. So it’s [inaudible 00:14:16]. So tell us about those.
Maggie Wells: It is. I had such a good time writing this book, because I got to combine a couple of things I really love, and I probably need to explain a little bit, because I know things are different over there than they are here, but it’s based on collegiate sport. And the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA, as we call it here, feeds most of the NBA and NFL American football programs over here. So, in order to play professional sports, most of the time you have to go through college to get to that level. They want to see you play, at least a few of those four years of college before they’re going to contract you. So it’s almost like an audition.
Maggie Wells: Because of that, collegiate sports in the United States are huge. They’re big money business. I live in the South, and football is everything down here, American football.[inaudible 00:15:14] is everything here. We spend our Saturday afternoons, I’m on Arkansas Razorback fan. I know how to Call the Hogs. I’m not going to do it here because it’s ridiculous. But we spend our afternoons watching football, tailgating and that kind of thing. So college football is everything. We don’t have a professional sports team here in Arkansas. The closest would be the Dallas Cowboys or the New Orleans Saints. So your college teams really become your teams.
Maggie Wells: And I was raised going to college football games. My dad was [inaudible 00:15:51] alumni in Indiana, and we would travel every weekend to the football games and so when I met my husband and I came to Arkansas to visit for the first time, he knew I liked Broadway musicals, so he said, “We can go see the damn Yankees at the [Robinson 00:16:05] Center or I can get tickets to a Razorback and then I said, “Ooh, I love college football.” And we got married. ‘Cause that’s how it happens down here.
Maggie Wells: Anyway, so I have to explain that, because most sport romance that you read does take place in a professional level. This is pre-professional, but it’s still big money stakes. Most colleges pay their head football coach more than they pay anybody else. The highest paid person in the state of Arkansas, paid by the public payroll, is the football coach. So you don’t realize these people make millions of dollars. And I actually had to explain to my editor when we were going through edits. [inaudible 00:16:51] “how can you afford this ring?” “I mean, do you have any idea how much these football coaches make? Hold on, let me pull up some figures for you.” So it’s a multi million dollar industry. I have to preface that, because a lot of people don’t really realize how much we are an American college football fan.
Maggie Wells: So this is a lot of fun for me, because I got to take … There was a woman’s basketball coach who coached for the University of Tennessee for a number of years. She’s passed away now, but her name was Pat Summitt and she was a legend in coaching in general, period, men’s or women’s. And she was one of those women who just owned it. From the very beginning she made no apologies for who she was, she knew she was good, and I said I’m going to write a character like that, who’s basically a superhero without a sword or a shield. She’s just that confident in her ability. So [inaudible 00:17:46] Olympic champion and she played in the WNBA and all these things, so she has all the credentials. She’s now the school’s winningest coach, and this is Logan, this is Kate and she’s fantastic. If I had a girl crush I’d have it on Katie. question had an item say.
Maggie Wells: I just wanted to make her just that unapologetically awesome woman, that we know so many of them in real life. We all do. These women who just are kicking ass in everything they do. And then I wanted to giver her a man that didn’t make her apologize for it. And then I came down a notch. He’s got to be coming up while she’s riding up high, right? So he’s kind of a a disgraced football coach which we had a situation like that where a [inaudible 00:18:39] football coach here in Arkansas was ridden out of town on the rail after an indiscretion, and so these are inspired by real life people, kind of, but they’re much more attractive. And they have a lot more fun.
Maggie Wells: But it’s fun, because I like to say it’s a modern day battle of the sexes, and it’s between a woman at the top of her game and a guy who’s just looking for a comeback and then he [inaudible 00:19:09] So that’s Love Games. And then the second book in the series is Play for Keep, and that is the men’s basketball coach, and the PR woman at the university, ’cause he gets in a little bit of hot water surrounding the demise of this marriage and she has to put the spin on it. And they get involved and that’s a lot of fun, too, because it takes place … Men’s basketball in the United States is another big high stakes thing. If you’ve heard anyone use the term March Madness, it’s all about college basketball, and it’s the entire month of March. The country shuts down and we all watch basketball whether you like it or not.
Sarah Williams: Well, excellent. It definitely sounds like we’re going to get a slice of American culture when we read those books.
Maggie Wells: [inaudible 00:20:03].
Sarah Williams: Yeah, which is brilliant. And you’ve got a lot of standalones and you’ve got the series and then you also have time once a week to write a blog.
Maggie Wells: Usually on Sunday night, because it’s due Monday. This is one of those commitments I made to myself. I think I’ve been blogging steadily since about 2013 on Mondays and usually it’s less than 500 words, and most of the time it’s just whatever is going on in my life. So it’s like five people probably didn’t care, and they said, “Hey, that’s great. Carry on.” And I just said, “Okay.” But it’s a lot of fun to be able to put a little bit of myself out there. A lot of times in writing fiction, we do insert a little of ourselves into our characters, but we never really get to be ourselves unless we’re putting a blog or something like this in the podcast or something in video out there where they’re not seeing who’s really behind the words. So I like to do the blog, and it’s usually about my dog or weather, heading out that weekend, but sometimes I talk about writing stuff and the behind the scenes, because I think there’s a lot misconception of what a writer’s life is like. I think people think once you’re published, you publish and everything just rains down from Heaven and you never get rejected again.
Sarah Williams: So tell us about how you do this, because you also have to work. And so when do you find time with these kids and this husband and everything else?
Maggie Wells: Well, luckily, the kids are grown now, so that’s made it a lot easier [inaudible 00:21:57]. When I started writing, my kids were home. They were teenagers. I actually started out writing fan fiction, and that was my escape from raising adolescents ’cause I would go write fan fiction for Gilmore Girls. I don’t know if you watch Gilmore Girls down there, but that was my show. I was a giant Luke and Lorelai worshiper. Still am. And that’s where I found my love of writing and y escapism, and I also found a group of friends through that fandom who encouraged me to write something original. So that’s where my first book came from, was actually out of that fan fiction era and juggling the home and the work and finding myself and coming into who I was [inaudible 00:22:52] time in your 30s and 40s where you start to realize “Who am I and what have I done? Where am I going and what am I going to have to show for it?
Maggie Wells: And I had a friend who said, “I want you to write something original,” and I was like, “You know, some day I’ll write a book.” And she like, “Well, when is some day gonna be?” And, “I don’t know. Well, I guess it’s now.” So that’s how it came up. But I haven’t been employed full time throughout. I know it’s a little different here in the States for us, but we don’t have universal health care, so I just did a workshop on writing full time and working full time and how people juggle it, because it’s a very real concern, particularly here in the States. My husband is self employed; he’s a real estate appraiser. He works for himself and that means my job provides our health insurance. So when I don’t have a job, we don’t have health insurance. So, for me being a full time writer isn’t really … Well, I’m still a full time writer, ’cause I’m still cranking the books out. But doing it for a living isn’t really going to be a possibility for that reason, we have to have and for your basic health care we need the second income because we all know that a writer’s income isn’t steady even if you’re getting a good one, there is those peaks and valleys that are really, really hard to weather.
Maggie Wells: So working full time, writing full time, really, really tests the time management skills. I had to learn to let go of some things, mostly housekeeping. [crosstalk 00:24:32] and cooking. But I’ve learned to use tools, dictation software, I started just recently in the past year dictating, and I do dictate usually in the car, I’m one of those crazy people you see with the headset on driving down the road talking to themselves. And I have a short commute, but in my commute I can speak for about 12 or 13 minutes uninterrupted, which will me 600 or 700 words. And when I have those transcribed through the Dragon software that night, that gives me a place to start.
Maggie Wells: So I have a couple little tricks. I start Scrivener, when my computer starts up I set it to boot up so I have to make a conscious decision not to write and close it down without putting any words in it, so that makes it a little harder to stomach the thought of just saying, “No, I’m going to be lazy tonight.” Click. And it gets rid of that fear of opening up the project, which for me I’m a terror of blank page, so I learned to leave myself leftovers in the next scene, so that I never start in blank that I’ve always got the first few lines in the next scene going because if I can stare at it for a while I won’t go.
Sarah Williams: Yeah. [inaudible 00:26:00] Exactly. Wow. And you’re a part of a Romance Writers of America, and heading down I saw your name and one of the signing sessions. So tell us about how long you’ve been with the RWA and-
Maggie Wells: Yeah. I joined RWA National in 2010 and found my local romance writers groups, we’re called the Diamond State Romance Authors, because you can actually mine for diamonds at Arkansas [inaudible 00:26:26] realize [inaudible 00:26:28] up your own diamonds, you find it, you can keep it. But the Diamond State Romance Authors were a very small chapter because Arkansas is not a very populated state, but we’re very close and very supportive of one another. We’ll predominantly publish in our chapter which is unusual. I’d say probably 90% of us are published, but we don’t get a huge influx of new members but we usually get one or two a year that’ll come join our merry posse. It’s an excuse for having Mexican food every month.
Maggie Wells: They’ve been fantastic. Those local groups are, I think, a godsend, especially to those of us who are a little bit isolated or hemmed in by the day job or hemmed in by family responsibilities. I have a friend that has two small children and she was about two hours from Little Rock, but she will drive up once a month for that meeting because that’s her day of getting away and talking to other writers and I think there’s the greatest value. There is the opportunities to speak to other people who are going through the same thing. We can talk about “My rejection.” Or, “Oh, it’s so frustrating, this Lion shutdown …” Yeah, so there’s a lot of where you can vent and you celebrate it. So we always make sure that we celebrate each other’s wins, because that’s a big deal.
Maggie Wells: And I like to go to other RWA chapters when I can. I just went up to the Chicago North RWA conference that they had in April, which was a lot of fun for me, because I have a lot of family in the area so I can combine friends and family and writing all in one big weekend so that was a lot of fun. And then I’m going to Denver for Nationals. I’m very excited about that ’cause I’ve never been to the Rocky Mountains. I’m a Midwest girl, I’m used to corn fields and soy bean fields. There are no hills in Illinois except for landfill. So I’m pretty excited about that and my critique partner is Canadian, and so we’re going to meet up there and have a week of bonding time.
Sarah Williams: Oh, fantastic. I’m quite jealous. I have been to Denver in my younger days. I did do a stint in America for a year there, and loved Denver. Yeah, but I can’t make it this year; I’ve got other things to pay for at the moment, but I’m already … I keep saying this onto the podcast, so it’s going to happen. I am coming next year to New York.
Maggie Wells: Yay! Have you been to one in New York?
Sarah Williams: Well, I’ve been to New York, but I’ve never been to a RWA conference. So it’ll be exciting, and I haven’t been to New York since pre 9/11 either, so that should be interesting, too. So, that’s exciting.
Sarah Williams: So, do you have books coming out soon that we can pick up your latest?
Maggie Wells: Well, I just had that April release, which was Play for Keeps and there’s time away from [inaudible 00:29:35] here. And then in August I don’t have a calendar for it, but this the first book in the series, the Play Dates series, book number three comes out in August. It’s called A Ring for Rosie. Book number two just came out in March, which was called Easy Bake Lovin’ which I have to tell you I had the most fun because I made … The heroine has an adult bakery, that caters to bachelor and bachelorette parties so she does all of these pastries that look at [crosstalk 00:30:05] … three time making out. So we laughed and laughed, my editor sent it back to me, she was like, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. I’m sorry I loved it.” But it’s been a fun series to write and so the third one in that series will be out in August and that’s Something for Rosie which is much sweeter story than Easy Bake Lovin’.
Sarah Williams: Oh, fantastic. And what are you working on at the moment? I see you’ve got a few things that you do at once.
Maggie Wells: I’m working on the third book in the Love Game series. It’s a series does revolve around three female friends and this will be Avery’s book, and I’m really excited about it because it’s a mommy by choice story so she’s going to be pregnant in the story and it’s an interesting twist. So I’m really excited for it because I like to explore all the different options that, especially women who are in … we have to face these do it now or do or die kind of situations when it comes to motherhood and children and marriage and all that stuff, so it’s been a lot of fun doing that. I also have a completed manuscript that I have not started revising yet, it’s in the hub resting. And it’s kind of a national meets a star’s blond sort of thing. It’s a family saga drama there with the mother and daughter relationship.
Maggie Wells: And then I have just started another one that’ll be targeted towards category romance and here in the States we have a show, I don’t know if it goes all over the world, but [inaudible 00:31:50] television ha a show called Fixer Upper which is a really big home improvement show, so it’s kind of a husband and wife doing, so I thought, ‘Well, what if they were divorced?’ And worked together on this show and then start dating other people. So it’s kind of this Fixer Upper meets It’s Complicated. [inaudible 00:32:12] what happens if we throw this complication in their life. [inaudible 00:32:14] loves them together. But they’re not together in the book.
Sarah Williams: Yeah, that’s so exciting. It sounds great. Well, where can we find you online?
Maggie Wells: I’m everywhere. My website is maggie-wells.com and I do blog as you said every Monday, I have Monday Mayhem there and I have my newsletter signup there as well. I tend to hit and run on Twitter, have a good time there and run away before things get too political. And I can be found at @maggiewells1 and you’ll know me because it says author of feminist sex-positive romance so it’s really easy to find. I am also on Facebook as author Maggie Wells and Instagram Maggie Wells 1, so all the usual places where everybody is.
Sarah Williams: Excellent, well thank you so much for that today, Maggie, that was really fun.
Maggie Wells: Thank you. I was glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Sarah Williams: Of course.
Sarah Williams: Thanks for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed the show. Jumping on to my website sarahwilliams.com and join my mailing list to receive free preview of my books and lots of other inspiration. If you like the show and wanted to continue you can become a sponsor just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/SarahWilliamsAuthor. And remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a review of the podcast. I’ll be back next week with another loved up episode. Bye.